Had I been a
few decades younger and more naive, I would have shouted “Woo-hoo! They’re
sending me some money!” But I have been around the block a few times. I am not easily taken in any more. I can spot
a scam when I see one.
This is
scurrilous behavior for a magazine with the reputation of Cruising World and it makes me mad that it would descend to such
depths of depravity in order to sell a few subscriptions.
When I am ordered to open an envelope immediately,
I deliberately make it wait. I send it to the bottom of the pile immediately to
teach it a lesson for being so rude, and I open it hours or days later, by
which time the people at Cruising World will,
with any luck, be turning purple with frustration. There are some repetitive letters that I
recognize from past experience, and I don’t open them at all. They go straight into the waste-paper basket,
savagely ripped in half.
But this time,
when I judged the folks at Cruising World
had turned the right shade of purple, I did open the envelope. As I thought,
there was no check for $151.64 enclosed. No, sir. Credit means something else
to these people. This is how they figured it out. Because they were offering me
a three-year subscription to their magazine (36 issues) for $28, they
calculated they were giving me $151.64 because if I’d paid the full cover price
I would have spent $179.64.
You don’t have
to be an Einstein to spot the fault in their logic, which is that I’d never
fork out $179.64 for 36 issues of Cruising
World when I can get it for $28. I may be an old grump, but I’m not crazy.
When they start
charging 77 cents per magazine, which is what $28 for 36 works out at, the
question arises: why not just give the darned thing away? There are plenty of
publications out there that make a living on advertising revenue alone. Why not
Cruising World? They could fire their
whole subscription department for a start, and save a lot of money.
That would make
me a lot less grumpy, too.
Today’s Thought
As for editorial content, that’s the stuff you separate the
ads with.
— Lord Thomson
of Fleet
Tailpiece
Scottish police
have found an effective way to break up rioting in the streets of Glasgow. They
send in constables armed with collection boxes.(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)
